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Topic: Skeptics of the Riddle Forums Unite (Read 767 times) |
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Star Warrior X
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Skeptics of the Riddle Forums Unite
« on: Nov 20th, 2003, 2:09pm » |
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Help me debunk this pike of bunk (at least MY bullcrap meter is off the scale). Check out http://www.stardrivedevice.com/summary.html. It jumps straight over my head, cuz I'm only a freshman, but I thought some of you guys could help me out. If it IS for real, then wow... and sorry to bother you.
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towr
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Re: Skeptics of the Riddle Forums Unite
« Reply #1 on: Nov 20th, 2003, 2:46pm » |
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I'm not saying it's impossible.. but when they start referring to zero-point energy, I'm thinking improbability drive.. Very improbably it'll ever drive anything..
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Wikipedia, Google, Mathworld, Integer sequence DB
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Icarus
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Re: Skeptics of the Riddle Forums Unite
« Reply #2 on: Nov 20th, 2003, 9:41pm » |
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Well I shall go a step farther and say that it IS impossible, as this line alone shows:
Quote:| it therefore becomes possible to create an electrical circuit which continuously outputs far more energy than it requires as input. |
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I.e., we have a perpetual motion machine here!
The numbers produced about lightning are bogus. That is not to say that the numbers are incorrect, but the conclusion he implies with them certainly is! "6.5 terawatts" - sounds like a lot of energy - but it isn't energy - it's power. How much energy is involved depends very much on how long it lasts. And as you know, it doesn't last long. I have never examined the energy requirements of lightning storms, but others have. If they had discovered that lightning was releasing more energy than the storm system was collecting, we would have heard about it long ago. (And this is a widely studied phenomenon, so a "conspiracy of silence" is laughably improbable.)
The reason arc welders require far less power to maintain an arc than to establish one is that the arc ionizes the air, creating a path of current carriers that was not there originally. This ionized path offers far less resistance.
What about "zero-point energy"? The worst thing I find about the "zero-point energy" craze is the comments about it from people who should know better. Energy is not actually what we need. Energy in and of itself is utterly useless to us. And in fact, we have never used up any of it. The universe has just as much energy in it today as it did at its inception (as far as we know).
What drives the universe, the sun, the ecosystem, industry, our very lives is not energy. It is the flow of energy. The movement of energy from what can be thought of as high concentrations to lower concentrations. Just as air moves from high pressure areas to low pressure areas, creating wind. So we consist of the wind of energy moving from concentrated to unconcentrated states.
Thus the problem with zero-point energy. It's everywhere, equally. Who cares if there is an infinite amount of it (a questionable interpretation anyway)! There is the same infinite amount of it everywhere. It is only the very much finite skim on the top that is differentiated, and whose flow we can use. If you want to make use of zero-point energy, you need to find a natural depression in it - man-made depressions require at least as much energy (flow!) to make as you could get from using it. Barring the discovery of such a natural depression, zero-point energy is a chimera when looking for energy sources.
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And e is just as cursed.
I wonder: Which is larger
When their digits are reversed? " - Anonymous
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James Fingas
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Re: Skeptics of the Riddle Forums Unite
« Reply #3 on: Nov 21st, 2003, 10:32am » |
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Here's my first Skeptic's Report on this phenomenon. What is not obvious from the page you linked to but is more obvious on this page is that he is using his "electrostatic field generator" to provide a reactionless drive.
This part is quite easily disprovable, separately from his over-unity power generation. He is saying that the space ship will be saucer-shaped, with the outer rim negatively charged, the middle (on both top and bottom) positively charged, and an insulating layer in between. There are a number of reasons that this does not provide any thrust:
1) It's symmetric. If it produced thrust, it would produce it equally up and down and in all radial directions (that is to say, it would produce no thrust).
2) By Newton's second law a purely reactionless drive is impossible. I believe that he calls his drive "reactionless" but actually means to use electrons as the reaction mass. But the electrons, although they might move around from one part of the craft to another, would not move between the craft and its surroundings, because there is no stated voltage difference between the craft and its surroundings.
3) Even if the craft were to generate some sort of voltage difference between itself and the surroundings, the act of producing the voltage difference would produce a thrust in the opposite direction to the thrust that could be obtained utilizing such a voltage difference.
I would also like to add that, from my understanding of the rotor design of this monstrosity, the designer doesn't understand why the Faraday Disk he mentions works. The Faraday Disk generator would not work better using a toroidal coil instead of a copper disk. As far as I can tell, it would reduce both the current and the voltage, rather than increasing the voltage by reducing the current.
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Icarus
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Re: Skeptics of the Riddle Forums Unite
« Reply #4 on: Nov 21st, 2003, 3:36pm » |
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I'm not sure that this is some crackpot. I'm wondering if it isn't a scam come-on. Dream up some "wow" sounding device (unlimited energy source or reactionless drive), find a simple and solid physical concept to serve as the basis (Faraday motor), throw in some pseudoscience hidden by jargon to try and justify the difference between your concept and the actual basis you use (zero-point energy), "simplify" the jargon by using examples which don't apply but for reasons your target probably is not aware of (Lightning, welding arc). You can even lie outright here, provided it sounds feasible and your target is unlikely to be familiar with the truth (as in the false statements about lightning).
Fed appropriately to your patsy, he may be eager to "get in on the ground floor" by investing in your "invention that will revolutionize the world".
There is enough there to make me wonder about the motives here.
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"Pi goes on and on and on ...
And e is just as cursed.
I wonder: Which is larger
When their digits are reversed? " - Anonymous
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